Guwahati, June 5: BJP heavyweights Smriti Irani, Arjun Munda, Ajay Mishra Teni and Kailash Chaudhary were among the 13 Union ministers who tasted defeat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, as stunning losses in three Hindi heartland states forced the BJP to rely on allies to form the government.

In a significant electoral shift, Smriti Irani, who had secured the Amethi Lok Sabha seat by defeating Rahul Gandhi in 2019, faced defeat at the hands of Congress candidate Kishori Lal Sharma, a close aide of the Gandhi family, by a margin of 1,67,196 votes.

In Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram constituency, Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar was defeated by Congress’s Shashi Tharoor, who won by a margin of over 16,077 votes.

Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Mishra Teni, embroiled in controversy following his son’s arrest in connection with the October 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri violence, lost to Samajwadi Party’s Utkarsh Verma by over 34,329 votes. Notably, the SP contested the Uttar Pradesh Lok Sabha elections in alliance with the Congress.

In West Bengal’s Bankura constituency, Minister of State for Education Subhas Sarkar was defeated by Trinamool Congress candidate Arup Chakraborty by a margin of 32,778 votes.

The Jharkhand Khunti Lok Sabha seat witnessed Union Tribal Affairs Minister and incumbent MP Arjun Munda losing to Congress candidate Kalicharan Munda by a substantial margin of 1,49,675 votes, as per the Election Commission’s official results.
After 12 hours of counting of votes that began at 8 am, the BJP won or was ahead in 240 seats to emerge as the single largest party, a far cry from the 303 it had won last time in the 543-member Lok Sabha to mark the return of coalition politics.

BJP’s key allies N Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP and Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) were leading or winning 16 and 12 seats in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar respectively. With the support of its other allies, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance was on course to reach the 272-majority mark.

Read: Saleng all set to vacate Gambegre Assembly seat, his victory to revive Congress in GH: says Pala

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